Grand Slam

By John R. Spencer

How Far Would You Go, And How Much Is A Friendship Worth?

   Kenny Hamilton, a wealthy descendant of U.S. founding father Alexander Hamilton, wants to create his own little empire and hatches a wild plan to capture a Caribbean paradise, The Cayman Islands.
   With spectacular dive

• Language: English
• Publisher: DeerVale Publishing
• Release date: Nov 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9780986372773

Book preview

II.

The Plan

One

Kenny Hamilton

Do you realize how easy it would be to take it? I ask Brad absently.

Huhm? Brad mumbles.

Of course—typical of Brad—he’s already half-dozing and not listening to me. Kind of amazing, considering the loud roar of the engines as we climb through a ruffling bank of clouds.

I have to crane my neck hard to see out of the plane’s stupid undersized window. Why are airplane windows never at the right height? You can’t see anything, unless maybe you’re a dwarf.

I watch as the beautiful Caribbean island gradually recedes into the distance several thousand feet below and behind us. Most of the island is already out of sight, a fast memory, fading just as fast as the vacationing and partying Brad and I did there over the last few days.

I can still just make out the outer reef where it wraps around the northeastern edge of Grand Cayman, like a necklace woven of undersea jewels.

Brad is stirring.

Huh? he mumbles again, peering toward me through one half-squinting eyelid.

I said, do you realize how easy it would be to take the place? I repeat, as the north side of the island slowly disappears from sight through the porthole-like window.

Brad obviously doesn’t register what I’m saying. He’s a little slow sometimes.

Take what? he says, shaking the cobwebs in his head. He rolls his head further right, looking at the back of my head.

Down there, I point.

He can’t see around me. He leans over my shoulder, stretching his neck like a chicken and peers out the window with me.

Take the ocean? What the heck are you blabbering about, Hamilton? Brad says, still not fully alert.

I guess I interrupted the beginning of a serious nap. It’s also obvious that Brad has a severe headache. Me, too. Too much rum last night. It’s only 6:45 in the morning. He’d normally be sound asleep this early. So I guess I can cut him some slack. Planes leave without the courtesy of considering anyone’s sleeping schedule. Or hangovers—except maybe the pilot’s. The last day of vacation, you just want to rest, but you have to get up before the crack of dawn to get to some stupid airport. Why? Spoils the whole trip.

The woman at the check-in counter this morning really overdid the smile thing as she rattled off, Good morning, sir! Her eyes beamed as if she was auditioning for a Broadway musical.

Not even close, I groaned.

But it’s our fault, though. We’re the ones who overdid it last night. The drinking thing, I mean.

Brad’s other eye finally opens and our eyeballs are about four inches apart. Looks like old Bradley outdid me in the overdoing department. He looks completely addlebrained, and his eyes redder than a late-evening sunset.

The way my stomach feels, I should probably be in a hospital instead of on this stupid, bumpy plane. This is the way most of our mini-vacations end up, with us both in pretty much the same shape as this morning. Trashed. The obnoxiously loud droning of the engines makes the whole inside of my head hurt. I can’t imagine how Brad’s brain feels.

I jerk his head toward the window. His eyes squint at the brightness and try to focus. He can see just the last fragment of the north shore of Grand Cayman as the plane starts to bank northeast. We watch as the island seems to flip into a different dimension, and disappears from view.

Finally, I think he’s caught on.

Take the—island? he asks dimly.

He rubs his sunburned forehead, staring at me as if I’m a complete stranger. And in a lot of ways, I am. To him, to everyone. I like it that way.

Never get too close.

Poor Brad tries harder to focus those reddened, drooping eyes. That’s what seven days of hard living will do to a guy. Bad headache, burned out, feeling like crap inside and out. I should know.

He lays his head back against his seat. I realize my eyes are grinning at him now, like a kid with a new toy. His tired brain is probably trying to assess my sanity. My brainstorm probably seems like it’s from Jupiter, or Saturn, someplace like that. I can see his mental wheels spinning slowly in the mud. Take the island? Kenny has gone insane. He frowns at me as if everything smells as bad as my breath, and inside this big, aluminum coffin right now, it does.

Kenny, what are you talking about?

I’m telling you, it would be so easy, I say, my voice wandering in my own mind, already starting to formulate a plan.

I look straight at Brad, my best friend for the last fourteen years. He can see I’m up to no good, as usual.

How deep did’ya go yesterday? he asks.

Deep? What, scuba diving, you mean?

Yeah, dummy. How deep? he presses me.

I can vaguely visualize the depth gauge on my buoyancy compensator yesterday morning, but it’s more blurry in my mind than it was in the water.

I don’t know. Eight-five, ninety feet, maybe. Why?

Yeah, well, I think you bobbed up too fast, Bucko. Ocean sucked your brain out of your ear or something. Lem’me sleep.

I can’t help but laugh. He’s a great friend, but I should know by now, don’t interrupt his sleep!

I stare out the tiny window again. Grand Cayman is shrinking into the distance but it’s still life-size in my imagination as my thoughts shift into the next gear.

Just thinking out loud, I mumble to myself, but then I realize—I probably shouldn’t be talking out loud like this. Too many snooping ears around. I glance at the numbed, bored faces of other passengers around me. Looks like nobody heard me. Everyone else is like Brad, already trying to make up for lost sleep.

Good. Don’t want to wreck the whole idea before I even get started.

I look around the cabin further for stewards, stewardesses, plain-clothes sky marshals, secret agents, aliens disguised as half-tanned old ladies in impossibly-and-disgustingly-tight tops and shorts. Nobody is paying attention.

Just thinking, I whisper again toward Brad.

He moans sarcastically, Well, that’s more than you usually do.

Guess he was listening after all.

He looks at me again, studying me skeptically, through those bleak, puffy eyes.

"Look, Kenny, I’m really tired, he mopes. I’ve no damned idea what you’re talking about. Leave me alone, will ya?" he begs, trying for the twentieth time to find that elusive spot against the head rest where he can get comfortable enough to doze.

I lean toward him again, whispering confidentially.

I’m just saying, my good Mister Schott, how easy it would be—to take that island. To make it our own. Are you with me?

I give him my most intense stare but his eyes are already screwing shut, trying hard to play opossum.

Sure, Kenny, he grouses, whatever. He cranks his head away.

The sleek, Canadian-built plane shudders a bit as the pilot leans hard into the throttles, finishing our climb, on a heading to the now-legal Cuban airspace, then on toward Miami. There’s a sudden bump and a hard jerk left. The plane dips, then lunges upward again like an overly-aged roller coaster starting up the next hill.

My guts do a double dip. They feel like my head—minus the benefit of a skull to hold it all in. Something I swallowed whole from that breakfast bar this morning doesn’t want to be down there—and it’s about to make a curtain call.

Run for the john, man! Move it!

I scramble over the top of Brad’s’ knees, jolting him back to half-consciousness and accidentally jabbing him in the ribs. He fakes a quick comeback with his left fist. I arrest his hand just before he makes contact with my ear. Even though he’s half-dozing again, catching his arm is like stopping a bat in full swing. The guy is super strong, even if he is kind of soft-headed.

Your own fault, Brad growls. Told you not to eat that greasy cake frosting last night, he adds without opening his eyes.

Well, like you care, but it was breakfast.

I swallow hard as I bolt from the seat, hustling to the back of the cabin. I fling the lavatory door open, wedging sideways into the tiny excuse for a bathroom which, thankfully, is vacant this early in the flight. Man, the stupid aircraft engineers did not build this head for my six foot, four inch frame! I feel like a giant sardine stuffed into an undersized can. I double over, smacking my forehead against the flimsy wall, and throw up.

I twist toward the miniature sink, needing to wash out my mouth, but of course there’s no damned cup! I scoop a couple of handfuls of water into my mouth and spit into the toilet.

Stupid Canadians, leaks out from under my now-even-fouler breath as I stumble out of the lavatory, who would design a bathroom that cramped!

I bet I look the same color as that putrid-green galley wall.

French, says a semi-gorgeous stewardess from her jump seat by the rear coffee station. She sniffs, without looking up from her Spanish-language magazine.

Huh? I say, staring at the really stupid-looking bun on her head. The uniform hairdo, no doubt, but even it can’t lessen her looks.

Canadians built it, but the French designed this one.

Well, those French must not like us much, I say, starting back up the rolling aisle like a drunk.

The stewardess thinks I’m out of earshot and says to her magazine, Can you blame them?

I intentionally bump Brad as I crawl back into my seat. See, bonehead, we should’ve gone First Class.

He doesn’t reply. His mind, such that it is, has drifted into Never-Never Land. I squirm back into my skinny seat and push the button to recline the back. Might as well get a nap. The seat goes back its maximum two and one-eighth inches.

Damned French.

The pilot banks sharply right this time. I try for a last glimpse of the islands. Grand Cayman is barely visible far in the distance, shrunken to a tiny, flat, brown dot in a very big sea. Even tinier, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac are almost indistinguishable specks parked in the glistening expanse of greenish-blue ocean. The sunlight, reflecting intensely off the water, finally wipes all three islands from sight. My eyes react, blinking.

I stare further into the distance, my vision fixed. Capture Grand Cayman. It sounds crazy, even to myself. But I know I can pull this off. I’ll just need a little help from my friends.

Hey, Schott, you think Traci would want in on this?

Huhm? Brad mumbles from somewhere in the suburbs of La-La-Land. Want in on what? He cracks one eye open just enough to let it glare at me. What are you all lathered about, Hamilton?

Traci—my girlfriend, dummy?—do you think she’d go along with this?

Kenny, I’m telling you, I’m exhausted. I have no clue what the heck you’re talking about. I just really want to sleep. So shut up, would you? Wake me in America.

Poor Brad. No stamina.

I know I can do this. I’ll be famous, like my great, great-whatever grandfather, Alexander. It’ll be another one for the history books! The Capture of Grand Cayman, that’s what they’ll call it.

If anyone can pull this off, it’s me.

My blood pumps in a rush. I can feel the adrenaline already! Get a grip, Hamilton. But this would be a kind of world record, I bet. Me, the first person in modern history to capture an entire sovereign nation—little old Kenny Hamilton.

Big, big world, I mumble to Brad, but mostly to myself. Little, tiny island ….

Man, this seat is a torture rack. It’s killing me! Damned French.

I stretch my neck against the headrest and try to wriggle down into the seat cushion. My eyes close, but my brain is whipping itself.

Yep. Easy.

Two

The Reporter

The Grand Slam. That’s what all the news and media outlets now call Kenny Hamilton’s outrageous plan to capture the Cayman Islands, and there’s probably only one or two really primitive tribes somewhere in the deepest jungles of the world who haven’t heard about it.

I’m a reporter for a small local newspaper on Grand Cayman. We mostly sell advertising. Yes, it’s a real cheapo outfit, I admit, and some of the ads we print are highly questionable. But you’ve got to live, don’t you? I’ve worked at the paper for about seven years, selling ads and covering mainly local news, what little there is.

Finally, there’s some real news.

But my interest in Hamilton’s insane plan is more than just professional. That’s because I unwittingly became involved in this story myself. My name isn’t important, and I was not one of the main players in the whole scheme. Still, after backtracking and researching the threads of how this crazy plan came to be, I almost feel that I was.

How did Kenny Hamilton’s great plan work out? As you could expect, it was a catastrophe.

How did I get involved personally? By what you could call a true accident, and only at the very end of the whole mess.

I’ve spent the last four months researching everything backwards to the beginning. I’ve spoken for hours and hours—sometimes whole days—with some of the main players. Those who are left, anyway. It’s funny how people will talk, and how much they will tell you, if they think it will end up in the newspapers. Everybody wants to be famous, I guess.

Vanity, vanity.

My problem is, I now have so much background information about the Grand Slam that my boss refused to ante up the cost of running the whole story, in serial form, in our dinky, weekly paper.

But I couldn’t just let it drop, so I’ve decided to put it together into a book. I’ve never tried this before. Maybe that shows. As a writer, I’m still rough around the edges, and my salt and pepper hair is ragged, and I wear fairly foolish looking glasses. Plus, for a guy who’s thirty-six, I may be just a little overweight. And sure, I know that probably every reporter in the world dreams of writing a great novel someday.

Novel? Double-entendre. I doubt you’ve ever heard anything as novel as what you’re about to read. I know full well that you won’t believe some of this. It will sound so far-fetched that you’ll think, no, the guy is just making up this part—or he’s lost his mind. I have to admit, even to an experienced reporter like me, some of it seemed to be nonsense when I began researching the back story. It’s got to be the craziest thing I’ve ever run across.

Maybe this will be my break as a reporter, and I’ll finally make some kind of name for myself. Then I could find a job as a real journalist. I just hope I can stay here in the islands. It’s the most beautiful place on earth, if you ask me.

But I’m wandering from the point.

As I’ve gone over all my notes and interviews, and looked back at some of the police photos, I’ve really struggled the last couple of weeks trying to decide how to launch into the story. I feel stumped. I have to wade you through what may seem like a literal swamp of events because I want you to come to know some of the main players the way I’ve gotten to know them. A story is just a story. It’s the people that matter.

You’ll never make sense of this thing, my boss told me when he turned down running all this in serial form.

I know, I said, it’s been like trying to assemble an oversized jigsaw puzzle with some of the key pieces and the whole outside frame missing.

He didn’t respond to my picturesque analogy, but I pressed him.

Where should I start? I asked, thinking that with so many years of experience he’d have a great idea.

You’re asking me? he said with a muddled look.

So much for bosses.

Anyway, I’ve settled on this. I’ll start near the end, since that’s where it started for me.

III.

The Plan,

Gone Haywire

Three

The Reporter

Traci Dennison sat as still as she could manage, considering the jitters tremoring throughout her body. She was not one to sweat, even during a major workout at her upscale gym in Philadelphia, but at the moment all her clothes felt damp, down to her underwear.

She was careful not to wipe her forehead under the lazy, low-slung bangs that swept down sideways across the top of her face because she didn’t want to give away how panicked she actually was. The walls of the cramped, gray police interrogation room in Grand Cayman’s main George Town Police Station seemed to shrink closer in on her as each minute passed. Her muscles were taut, and her whole body felt as if it was turning to stone.

She was absolutely petrified. To make matters worse, the anonymous detective who had refused to give Traci his name also refused to sit down across from her. He hovered closely behind her—much too close for Traci—increasing the sweat that seeped from every pore of her skin.

What was he doing back there? It made her even more jittery. She could smell a vague aroma of garlic that she assumed was coming from him. Whether from his breath, or his clothes, she couldn’t tell. It was just noxious enough to make her stomach feel even worse than it already did.

The man, a detective with the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service, moved a little to her right side, then back, as if he was completely bored and wishing he was out in the bay fishing. But then, she worried, maybe he wasn’t bored at all. Maybe he was about to run a long, sharp knife into the back of her neck in payment for her crimes today.

Traci knew this fear was just her nightmarish imagination running off somewhere into a mental thicket, but she couldn’t help herself. Why couldn’t he just be a gentleman, and sit down and look at her, and question her like a normal person?

Maybe because he was a foreigner to Traci, her feelings and fears had ramped up several notches. Her emotional tachometer, like an over-run motor, had redlined hours ago.

Then there was that irritating sound. The detective kept picking at several finger nails with other finger nails, loudly enough to make Traci hear, to make her sweat even more, to rattle her. It was like a mindless woodpecker pecking at a tree branch, but this branch was inside of Traci’s skull. It was such a rude, uncouth sound to have to just sit here and put up with. She was sure he was intentionally trying to irritate her. That’s what cops do, isn’t it?

The detective was not a huge man, but to Traci Dennison he was intimidating and terrifying. Dark hair and dark, thick eyebrows framed his full face. His overly-large, jagged nose gave him a wolfish look, danger cloaked by wile. His smaller but burly figure gave him the look of a half-grown grizzly, ready to take off her head—and maybe an arm or leg, for good measure. The annoyed growl in his voice barely concealed his frustration with Traci, and his dark brown suit only added to the overreaching sense of threat she felt having him so near.

Finally, he came around in front of her.

All right, Miss Dennison, once more. Where is this Kendall Hamilton now?

I’ve already told you. I don’t know. She tried to look confident and sincere, but failed on both counts.

Yes. You said that. I just don’t believe you. He gave her a feigned smile that would have looked natural if he had just bitten into a three week old, moldy sandwich.

Well, you just have to believe me, Traci protested. Why would I lie?

She smiled back, but it was obviously forced. Still, even though it was half-hearted, her smile began to charm the man. It was her famous, one-of-a-kind Traci smile, the smile that had attracted her boyfriend, Kenny Hamilton, to her in the first place. Her smile was unique not so much in its shape or expression but simply because every time it graced her face it seemed to bear up out of her soul some secret happiness and reveling, like a woman who has just climbed her first 14,000 foot Rocky Mountain peak and conquered it.

While the detective would never let himself remotely show it, he did find Traci extremely attractive. She seemed to have not only a winning personality but the looks to match.

Traci had always attracted men, some of whom she liked, but many of whom she didn’t. Her light brown hair enclosed a lovely face that was home to two of the sweetest brown eyes ever given to a woman. A little taller than average, at twenty-five she had reached that stage of physical and emotional maturity that had finally taken her beyond girlhood into the realm of true womanhood. Though she had a slightly plumper figure, it was a plump that was perfect, with highly toned muscles under the plumpness, the result of her constant workouts at the gym she not only managed but owned in downtown Philadelphia. In the short time she had run it, after being bankrolled by her very generous grandpa, the gym had become one of the three favorite workout venues for older teens and adults in the whole metropolitan area.

Had it not been for the unusual business of this day—an attempted take-over of the island nation of Grand Cayman—Traci would have been suited out in her typical designer wear, perhaps a silken sweater perfectly showing off the curves of her figure, highlighted by a medium-length skirt of a subtle but striking color. But at the moment, she really didn’t need all that to impress this middle-aged detective, whatever his name. The black and gray, quasi-military, one-piece outfit she had on was just fine, because she had only to fall back on that perfect smile, a smile that would normally have been framed by a perfectly made-up face that never lacked the tones and accents that some women seem to naturally absorb into their skin.

This afternoon, her perfectly made-up face was marred by faded rouge and streaks of mascara that had run onto her cheeks and chin after several hours of crying in her jail cell.

The irritating detective moved around behind her again and continued to hover, the garlic smell wafting around him like aftershave on a corpse. He was waiting for a better answer, an answer he liked. Traci turned and forced herself to smile at him again, the same Traci smile that could melt ice cream still in the freezer, the smile that was an electromagnet to men. She worried that it might be her only way out of here. She looked at the detective intensely, and turned up the power.

It didn’t work. For the first time in her life, a man snubbed her smile. He got the blatant hint, but he wasn’t biting. He had been lured along by such enticements by countless women once they were in custody, but he had never been snagged. It was what the detective and his buddies called the Try To Buy look. He wasn’t buying.

He shook his head as if addressing an errant six-year-old, ignoring Traci’s beautiful face and alluring smile, and returned to her last comment.

Why would you lie? Let me see, Miss, first, maybe, because you are a criminal and you are under arrest. In my experience, criminals under arrest don’t usually come clean so quickly—and not so voluntarily, either—and not without a lot more prying by yours truly. And second, because you are a close personal friend of the man you claim is the brains behind this whole insane scheme.

He mimicked her smile, which irritated Traci and evaporated what was left of her own.

Let me think really hard, he went on. Third, everything about you at the moment—your expression, your body language, the perspiration dripping through the hair above your ears—they all shout, ‘Hey, Mr. Copper, look at me, I’m lying!’

His fake smile was instantly gone. He looked really mad now and was becoming more impatient. Traci didn’t know it, but because of her antics today, and those of her cohorts, he had missed a lunch date with his wife and young son, a rare date that he had made with them over a week ago, and an opportunity to spend time with his family that would not come around again anytime soon.

Trying to stay professional, he swallowed his anger and came around in front of Traci once more. He sat down ponderously, a look of controlled exasperation masking his face. Her actions today had cost him precious time with his two favorite people, and he was not in a forgiving mood.

So—where the hell is this Hamilton guy? he demanded very loudly.

I can’t tell you, Traci whined with a beleaguered frown, cowering. She could smell her own sweat over the garlic.

"Why can’t you tell me, Miss Dennison?" he nearly shouted.

Because, I told you, I honestly don’t know! she hollered back. Don’t be such a jerk!

Instantly, she caught herself, swallowing a breath, realizing she had probably gone too far by yelling at him. She was certain she had made him even madder now.

"Honestly … , the detective mimicked, his voice quieter, but almost sneering. Do you always speak honestly with police detectives, Traci?"

The question smarted, provoking old but very deep feelings. Her troubled past leapt like a specter from the recesses of her memory. Traci had been something of a wild-child in her early teen years, and served two short stints